Sen­ti­ment got a lift when the Dow Jones In­dus­trial Av­er­age rose 0.8% and the S&P 500 lifted 0.6% on gains in the broader fi­nan­cial sec­tor. Aus­tralia’s S&P/ ASX 200 in­dex was up 0.9% af­ter the Re­serve Bank of Aus­tralia kept rates on hold at a record 1.5%.

‘‘It’s been a pos­i­tive day in re­ac­tion to off­shore firm­ness in the mar­kets. We are re­ally fol­low­ing them and we are just claw­ing back our losses from Oc­to­ber,’’ Grant Wil­liamson, a direc­tor at Hamil­ton Hindin Greene said.

A2 Milk lifted 3.5% to $10.50 af­ter fall­ing in re­cent ses­sions. Mr Wil­liamson said the lift was not driven by any spe­cific news but by buy­ing in­ter­est at these lev­els.

There seemed to be a ‘‘pretty sig­nif­i­cant turn­around’’ with buy­ers com­ing back into the mar­ket in Novem­ber, he said.

Orion Health Group was up 1.8% to $1.16. Yes­ter­day, the tech­nol­ogy com­pany raised the likely price range for its planned buy­back to $1.20 to $1.25 from $1.16 to $1.26, fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the sale of its Rhap­sody unit to UK pri­vate eq­uity firm Hg for $205 mil­lion.

Con­tact En­ergy added 0.9% to $5.65. Ear­lier the com­pany said its op­er­at­ing earn­ings dur­ing the past four months were ahead of last year. It gen­er­ated 3158GWh of elec­tric­ity in the four months through Oc­to­ber, about 8% more than the year be­fore. Av­er­age prices for that out­put were 55% higher at $133.42 per megawatt hour.

Mr Wil­liamson said gains were across the board with the ex­cep­tion of a hand­ful of stocks.

Ry­man Health­care fell 3.3% to $12.20 but he said there was no spe­cific driver be­hind the move. The same was true for SkyCity En­ter­tain­ment, which fell 3.4% to $3.72.

Z En­ergy bounced slightly af­ter sharp falls since it rat­tled in­vestors last Thurs­day with a 21% drop in first­half earn­ings and a div­i­dend about 5c less than they were ex­pect­ing. The stock added 1.9% to $5.28.

While in­vestors will be keep­ing one eye on do­mes­tic news, such as labour data to­day and the cen­tral bank’s mon­e­tary pol­icy state­ment to­mor­row, Mr Wil­liamson said the main fo­cus was off­shore.

US con­gres­sional midterm elec­tions were of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est but tough to call, he said. Re­sults are due to­mor­row (NZ time).

The bench­mark S&P/ASX200 in­dex was 57.1 points higher, or 0.98%, at 5875.2 yes­ter­day while the broader All Or­di­nar­ies rose 0.91%.

The Aus­tralian dol­lar held firm af­ter the Re­serve Bank kept the of­fi­cial cash rate at a record low of 1.5% and Gov­er­nor Philip Lowe said GDP was ex­pected to grow 3.5% in 2018 and 2019, up from 3.0%.

The Mel­bourne Cup may be the race that stops the na­tion but its cor­re­spond­ing par­tial pub­lic hol­i­day com­bined with the loom­ing US mid­term elec­tion made for a light day of trad­ing on the lo­cal in­dices, Com­mSec mar­ket an­a­lyst James Tao said.

‘‘A lot of peo­ple’s at­ten­tion is cer­tainly not on the mar­kets to­day so the light vol­ume has seen a pick up for the fi­nan­cials and re­sources,’’ he said.

‘‘There’s a bit of a hold­ing pat­tern here and glob­ally.’’

In­vestors are also likely hold­ing out for the US rates de­ci­sion com­ing later this week fol­lowed by the RBA’s state­ment on mon­e­tary pol­icy, Mr Tao told AAP.